October 1, 2024 by Quill Tree Books
E ARC provided by Edelweiss Plus
Elise has just turned 12, and is hanging out at the fall festival with her best friends Melinda and Ivy. They haven't been friends that long, but after her friend Amelia moved away, they started hanging out. They have a fun slumber party at her house, and Elise receives a locket with a clock in it from a mysterious source. The girls eventually fall asleep, but when Elise wakes up, it's months later! She thinks at first that her sister Shay or brother Theo are pranking her. It's very odd, and going to school makes it even worse, because she finds out that Melinda and Ivy are no longer speaking to her. Desperate to sit with someone at lunch, she finds Cora, with whom she was close before the pandemic. Since the two just drifted apart, it's easy to reconnect. Elise also finds out that she has joined the photography club and is in the middle of a project. She eventually confides her very odd circumstances to Cora, who offers to help her piece together what happened. They manage to get the story of Melinda and Ivy from Amelia, whom Elise had contacted after an all-too-typical misunderstanding between the three that caused them to fall out. However, there's more to it than that. Cora was the one who gave the locket to Elise, and she has one herself, purchased from Daphne's Delights, a shop that specializes in magic. There's something more to the time slip, and Elise and Cora have to work together. Will they decide to go back to the fall festival, or will they try to make the best of their lives?
Strengths: There are some very clever things going on that caused the time travel to occur, and I don't want to spoil them! Combining magical realism with friend drama is brilliant; can you imagine missing six months of your seventh grade school year? On top of these innovations, the story is really well grounded, with Elise having to deal with small, realistic family situations and BOTH of her parents! I really wish there would be more details about family life in middle grade books. There are some spells involved, which I would absolutely have adored when I was 12, and a satisfying ending. Marks has done several good realistic fiction books (From the Desk of Zoe Washington, A Soft Place to Land), so it's interesting to see her turn her hand to a fantasy book.
Weaknesses: This switches from Elise's point of view to Cora's in the middle, which I didn't enjoy. However, this increases the text complexity, as I recently learned from taking a Science of Reading course, so maybe this is a good thing.
What I really think: I thought this would be something along the lines of Deriso's Do-Over (2006), maybe because of the title, but it ended up being a very different kind of time slip book that I enjoyed very much.
Elise has just turned 12, and is hanging out at the fall festival with her best friends Melinda and Ivy. They haven't been friends that long, but after her friend Amelia moved away, they started hanging out. They have a fun slumber party at her house, and Elise receives a locket with a clock in it from a mysterious source. The girls eventually fall asleep, but when Elise wakes up, it's months later! She thinks at first that her sister Shay or brother Theo are pranking her. It's very odd, and going to school makes it even worse, because she finds out that Melinda and Ivy are no longer speaking to her. Desperate to sit with someone at lunch, she finds Cora, with whom she was close before the pandemic. Since the two just drifted apart, it's easy to reconnect. Elise also finds out that she has joined the photography club and is in the middle of a project. She eventually confides her very odd circumstances to Cora, who offers to help her piece together what happened. They manage to get the story of Melinda and Ivy from Amelia, whom Elise had contacted after an all-too-typical misunderstanding between the three that caused them to fall out. However, there's more to it than that. Cora was the one who gave the locket to Elise, and she has one herself, purchased from Daphne's Delights, a shop that specializes in magic. There's something more to the time slip, and Elise and Cora have to work together. Will they decide to go back to the fall festival, or will they try to make the best of their lives?
Strengths: There are some very clever things going on that caused the time travel to occur, and I don't want to spoil them! Combining magical realism with friend drama is brilliant; can you imagine missing six months of your seventh grade school year? On top of these innovations, the story is really well grounded, with Elise having to deal with small, realistic family situations and BOTH of her parents! I really wish there would be more details about family life in middle grade books. There are some spells involved, which I would absolutely have adored when I was 12, and a satisfying ending. Marks has done several good realistic fiction books (From the Desk of Zoe Washington, A Soft Place to Land), so it's interesting to see her turn her hand to a fantasy book.
Weaknesses: This switches from Elise's point of view to Cora's in the middle, which I didn't enjoy. However, this increases the text complexity, as I recently learned from taking a Science of Reading course, so maybe this is a good thing.
What I really think: I thought this would be something along the lines of Deriso's Do-Over (2006), maybe because of the title, but it ended up being a very different kind of time slip book that I enjoyed very much.
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